Mark opens up a Blackstar HT-1R guitar amp, with a no-sound fault. The fault is a bit of a mystery, and maybe it's haunted? Also featuring a bonus Hondo Les Paul replica, rescued from a skip!
In my opinion as an electronics engineer who has repaired a ton of kit in my time an amp with no sounds is better than an amp with sound only when it feels like it. Mark didn't mention it much, but I am sure he feels uneasy about whether he actually repaired the clearly present initial fault or not.
As a fellow brit, we need to keep the term ‘valve’ alive. I’ve noticed more and more brits and fellow europeans now using the American ‘tube’ term. I know it’s because the internet is dominated by American articles and videos but we don’t have to automatically conform to that.
@20:00 - haha nice - believe it or not Keith played all those songs with 5 strings , he removed the E string during that period and maybe to this very day and dropped tuned the guitar so he could play mostly open. That's why so many cover versions of late 60s stones songs sound odd.. they play with too many notes.
It's a terrible badge to be sure. You can fill in the nut-slots somewhat with baking soda and superglue (it cures almost instantly, harder than most plastics) and then file the slots to fit the string more snugly, which will improve tuning and intonation.
Great fix. Ah yes, Ernie Ball Super Slinkys, my favourite. To rebuild the nut, the bit by the tuning pegs, you can use the old superglue and baking soda trick. Wrap the neck and headstock, either side of the nut, with cling film, clean the old slots in the nut with a bit of sandpaper or a small file, put on superglue followed by some baking soda, then add some more superglue until the baking soda is completely wetted. Once set refile slots to required depth.
@@matthewpower3062 true, however, others may not, so if they have this issue, and read my comment they'll know how to fix it. Share the knowledge I say.
You're right! Shoe glue + baking soda is the common solution. Even just shoe glue is fine for temporary fix but the best fix would be replacing it for a new bone nut replacement.
I am 68 and I have been playing guitar since I was 14. I must have changed hundreds of sets of strings and yet I still wince when taking the top E up to pitch for the first time. I even found myself wincing when you tuned up the top E in this video. Weird. I have had two Blackstars in my time - the HT 5 and the HT 60, which takes IMO top prize for the best amp I have ever played through - had to sell it as I was getting too old to pick it up and chuck it in the back of the car. It's ironic that when I was a kid, I yearned for a dual Marshall or Orange stack, but could never afford one - now I could buy one, I wouldn't be able to carry it.
I'm a regular gigging musician, playing just about every weekend. I change strings every two weeks. I still wince while tensioning high E, even while playing .010. I don't think one ever overcomes that. As for the Blackstars, I never cared for them. They seemed a bit too sterile on the clean channel. There is a lot to be said for the weight advantage, though. That's why I moved to a modeler. :)
@@guitarstitch Before I had the Blackstar 60 watt, I had a Marshall DSL 40watt valve amp - it was great for the crunchy stuff, but the clean channel wasn't clean enough. The valve Blackstar could be clean enough for acoustic guitar while having the three channels plus additional voicing that could sound like ACDC, but it weighed a ton and I'm not famous enough for a roadie. I thought about taking out one 12'' speaker and filling the inside with helium balloons, but realised that wasn't practical. I now use a Katana 50 which has all sorts of digital gubbins controllable by computer - the problem I find with that is with the distortion/overdrive settings - set it up for a crunch with full volume on the guitar, and then back off the guitar volume and the crunch stays, it just gets quieter. In a true valve amp, the crunch would slowly fade into almost clean sounding guitar. I am getting around this by using a pedal board with a germanium transistor overdrive pedal and discrete boss pedals for delay and chorus - and my old homemade wah pedal. The katana is set as clean and green - in fact it could be left at home and I just plug into the PA. When I started gigging in 1972, all I had was a Japanese Les Paul copy and a WEM ER40 and it sounded great - our PA was a 50watt Selmer TB50 and now we have 2x 1500 watts - the world has gone mad.
blackstar are super serious about their amps, even the teeny ones, yeah they are hybrid but they do it in all the places you can get away with to make it still sound like a tube amp, excellent little devices
I think you were on to something when you said cracked component - I've seen a few resistors where the leg has detached from the carbon and makes intermittent contact , especially when running hot - you might have this one back in sooner than you think!
What a strange choice for output valves? Apparently rated at 1 watt! Must use a very efficient speaker, I have 1960's practice amp using a single EL84, that is pretty loud for a 5 watt output 😁
Oh dear, that nut was defuinitely a bodge. StewMac channel with Dan Erlewine shows a trick to fix a broken nut using Baking Soda and super glue... so you could have done that if the Nut slots realy did need filling and recutting and filing. but don't do anything till its fully strung and you try to set the string height and action and check for string buzz. I had one of those as my first amp but gave it to my son with a parts built Telecaster i built for his 17th birthday. grea little practice amp with good vavle sound. I replaced it with a VOX AC4TV into which I fitted a Celestion Greenback. great upgrade
Very interesting. I don't see one of the double triodes used at all on that circuit. Each glass valve contains two triodes. Do they all do something? I've never seen an ECC 82 or ECC 83 double triodes used as an output valve before, even in push pull like this. They are usually used as pre-amps and phase splitters to drive larger output valves. The amp must be quite low in audio power output, perhaps just intended for practice.
Sheer joy watching Mark work. Absolutely delightful indeed. Thanks a lot for sharing these with us Mark. Good luck and best wishes to you and yours. 🎉. Cheers!
Thank you very much for making a new video, I was starting to panic after a few weeks. I understand quite a bit of work is involved making a video for the needy watchers.
I was impressed that you are a very experienced technician, so thorough, professional and very knowledgeable. A pleasure, well done to you, always keep smiling
Brilliant skills ... though surprisingly I think I can add another one to your armoury! I have seen that on this and other projects you resort to levering off control knobs. You do take reasonable care but the levering can potentially cause damage to the surrounding finish and sometimes to the knobs themselves (this is one reason why the knob separated from its internals and had to be re-glued). The easy and safe way is to take a soft cloth (e.g. a duster) and feed its edge under the pot then using the rest of the cloth bunched in your hand just pull the knob ... even stuck ones come off relatively easily because you are able to pull in a straight line rather than the sideways forces when levering sideways ... and there's no risk of causing damage.
Not only are you good at what you do but you are always smiling and have a jovial attitude! I really enjoy watching you. Thanks. By the way, I subscribed to you at least 4 times. Today again I was unsubscribed and it was not me unsubscribing.
What I often do when the solder joints look good is to breathe on them for a moment; they then become dull, and sometimes you can see small circles where the solder is interrupted.
Looking forward to the next video Mark. You have inspired me to rediscover my love of electronics. It's wonderful to see the great British tradition of genius blokes in sheds running businesses and doing incredible stuff isn't dead. Thanks largely to watching you I've got my old student hi fi amp back to life and am basking in 80's nostalgia. ❤
Mark....the electric rolling Guitarstone.....! Well done and a pretty good performance on the Strings ! You are the Man ! Kind regards from Germany, Rudi👍
Great repair video Mark! I must say the sound of the wound strings (E, A, D) being threaded gives me shivers up my spine. Not sure why, but that sound just sets me off 🙂
Many thanks for showing me so many things I never learned at Wigan Tech Audio & TV course in 1981. I recently did some component replacement on a Peavey Valvestate 20, I believe one of the EL84 caused a short and blew 2 fuses one glass the other that looked like a small capacitor that basically exploded.
I'm so happy to see repeatedly by many 'experts'.... the THUMP BANG AND PROD method of finding problems !!! LOL 😅 seriously how I have found most issues with board components in much faster fashion than breaking out the other special tools.
I like the way Mark works he’s very intelligent, works things out extremely well and I’m thinking of sending him something if he doesn’t mind trying to repair it
I'm amazed that you even know how to maintain/fix an electric guitar! I'M A HUGE FAN right now! About the nut slots, you can just add shoe glue and baking soda there to fill the depth of each slots. It works like a charm!
Mark pointed it out but did not mention replacing it. Hence my feeling that this amp will be back. Nothing is more embarrasing than when a customer returns a previous repair.@@ncooper8438
After 50 years of repairing electronics i have had my share of jobs that come back to haunt you just when you think you have seen them for the last time. The trade call them boomerang jobs for a good reason.@@FindLiberty
The definite fault with these amps, as with a lot of other modern tube amps is, they put tubes on the board without adequate heatsinks, or ventilation and everything around them gets too hot, causing the problems found here. Most of them can be fixed by reflowing everything
